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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
You may find this hard to believe, but I decide if I like a song by how it sounds, not by whether or not the artist is pro or anti-establishment. Nor by whether or not it appeals to the masses.
That was awesome! Thanks for that retort.
I recall an interview with Julia Child on NPR. A caller asked if she liked Big Macs. She said "I quite like a Big Mac, but I much prefer a Quarter Pounder with Cheese."
For example, people who try to equate liking ABBA with being musically unsophisticated or with having some sort of pro-corporate, terrorist loving worldview. Or people who equate not liking ABBA with having "taste".
This problem goes beyond music. There seems to be a certain attitude people have towards everything (music,movies,sports) which is: I personally don't like it therefore it sucks, and anyone who likes it sucks and is shallow, brainwashed, immature, etc etc etc.
I don't specifically care much for ABBA, but I know my day is brightened if I happen to hear the Cars "Just What I Needed" on the radio. But normally I listen to .
I either didn't know or had completely forgotten about the Abba guys' collaboration with Tim Rice on "Chess." I still have the LP! It didn't become a theatrical success (at least on Broadway, I think it fared better in London) but one song crossed over into mainstream music--"One Night in Bangkok"--and I remember playing one ballad over and over..."I Know Him So Well." Think I may have to get that LP out to reminisce...
Still, there's a difference between "appreciating" musical artists and actually liking their music. And I really don't like ABBA music, even if some of their lyrics are imprinted in my brain by their ubiquitous play over many years (and yes, catchy lyrics--I'll give them that for sure, but there are LOTS of catchy lyrics I don't want trampling around my psyche all day long!). I can't control background elevator or restaurant or movie send-ups, but I do change the radio station if ABBA comes on.
No criticism intended of ABBA fans. To each his own! I like so many different types of music, including some pop stuff to which many people would say UGH!, but ABBA just never did it for me.
Forget ABBA. They suck. Their arrangements are boring. Completely for the brain dead. What really needs to happen is a stage production (and accompanying film) of Rush's "2112" and Iron Maiden's "Number of the Beast". That would kick ass!
:insert awe-inspiring reference to a totally radical world-changing paradigm-shifting profound band here:
My fondness for ABBA (and if 53 counts as old, then I am among the old white guys anointed in an earlier post) preceded the years I lived in Sweden during the 1980s, but being part of the weird pop music culture (the world's second largest Elvis museum is in a rural Swedish town) out of which they emerged helped me appreciate it all the more. I've run through several copies of ABBA Gold since...the most recent one coming as a present for my daughters, now 6 and 4, who about went to pieces when the previous one started doing what all CDs do when played more than 12 times. They fight over which song to listen to in the car, they sing them in daycare/school and at music class (Emma's music teacher's late father was an ABBA fan, and when Emma sang SOS at the beginning of class one day, she almost cried), and they demand to see old videos on Youtube. Of course, this was the second CD with high harmonies, bouncy rhythms, and the spiritual elan described in Williams' article that they glommed on to: The first was Simon and Garfunkel's Greatest Hits. Music snobs, make of that what you will.
happy music ... that put a bounce in your step and a buzz in your ear that would not go away ... very 1984, or THX1138... asexual, unthreatening ...
Actually the funniest thing I've seen on TV in ages was watching some Time/Life infomercial on the great music of soft rock ... virtually all of which was truly insipid and forgettable ... I felt embarrassed for the presenters who I.DID.NOT.RECOGNIZE. Hawking bands like Air Supply ...
Catch it. It will bring back memories of reaching over rapidly to punch some other button on your car radio.
The movie sounds like a lot of fun ... I guess for some folks it was "the soundtrack of my life" ... I was marveling last week that I owned both Fleetwood Mac albums ... oh, and the Doobie Brothers ... don't get me started ...
...I never even heard of ABBA until I read an article in the business section back in the 90's about how they were one of the biggest selling groups of all time. Only then did I realize they sang the ONLY ABBA song I can name--the hideous yet ubiquitous "Dancing Queen."
It's like musical herpes. You never know when it's gonna break out on a patch of sensitive skin. For life.
Maybe it's my age (old enough to grow up with the Beatles), or being black or being a New Yorker. Or all three. But I really don't get it.
ABBA means something to my wife, who is also a black New Yorker, but a little younger. Then again, she is one of about 20 people in America who didn't "get" Seinfeld. Still doesn't.
Go figure!
Popularity tells us much, but it rarely tells us anything about inherent value. H. R. Jauss suggested that the reception of art tells us its ideological value. Those art works that get debated, that annoy us, that cause scandals, are the ones that are questioning our ideology and asking the questions that trouble us. Those works that are palatable to "everyone" are those that tell us what we already believe.
ABBA was calculatedly reiterating the fables we tell our children, stories about the subjective self, about "love," about romance, about how gosh-darned important our angst is. Their songs told readymade stories derived from, or uncannily similar to, 1950's Doris Day-like films, 1960's prime time television. In other words, their narratives could not be objected to, because they told us what we "all" wish to believe.
Compared to them, contemporary acts like Lou Reed (who had a hit record with "Walk on the Wild Side": a song about TG prostitutes) and Television and the more severe of the "art rock" folks were at least doing formalistic experiments, if not starting to question the validity of mass assumptions. Those narratives, whether they were ever profound or not, at least pushed at the edges, and their listeners would have to make more mental room, ask more questions, and that is why these works were officially acceptable as officially "weird."
To suggest that there is any exercise of intellect in ABBA lyrics, aside from Bjorn's heavy policing of the act for image and stance, is puzzling. There is always a reward for being the reassurance a society seeks in a troubled time. It is always remunerative. It is not, however, ideologically, intellectually, or philosophically helpful.
That ABBA are rich is something that, I am sure, will please their grandchildren. It does me no good or ill when asked why they became beloved. That is the question the columnist seeks to answer: why and when.
When? When camp's satire was neutralized by the profit motive. Why? Because, like the 1970's, we are seeing a supposed destruction of empire and economy. The next thing to see revival will probably be the Survivalist movement, which had turned into the Militia movement that McVeigh joined.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
